HalfMast
by Amanita Jackson
Summary: Blaise is depressed and talks about his infatuation with Seamus, who's turned out to be straight. Sorry. It's 1 am, what do you want from me? SLASH! DEPRESSION! CHARACTER DEATH! R&R.


Ahhh, I love Seamus. He reminds me of me (the fanfic versions of him--hehe you know what I mean!). I was feeling rather down, because I kinda just got dumped by my girlfriend because she isn't sure that she likes me. She's kinda confused right now. She didn't actually say that we're not together anymore, but she said she doesn't like me right now.

I was working on this for a few months and planned to finish it up this weekend. Maybe I should have waited so it has a different end. Sorry, but I just can't write a happy ending right now. If you like, I'll try and fix it later. For the time being, deal with it. It's one in the morning, I'm feeling down, I can damn well write as much ansgt as I frickin want to. Flame if you like.

I have recently become attached to Blaise/Seamus, so write more of those, people!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I just play with them, and though I may lose them under the bed on occasion, I usually put them back when I'm done. If Rowling doesn't like what I'm doing, well, it's her own fault for telling me about these people. Don't sue, although why anyone would is beyond me. Song is Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.

Rating: T

Warnings: SLASH! BoyXboy! Suicide mentioned! Violence! Swearing! Use of the F-word!

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**I had visions, I was in them  
I was looking into the mirror  
To see a little bit clearer  
Rottenness and evil in me**_  
_

Everyone calls me a slut. I'm not the only one to be called that, but it's true. I am a slut. A total slut. I'm not a very nice person either. I don't know why I like to play with people. I just do. Hell, don't listen to me. I'm screwed up. You probably guessed that already, though, with me being in Slytherin and everything. All Slytherins are screwed up somehow, more than the other Houses put together. Just look at Salazar, the most screwed up founder. But I digress. I ramble a lot. But I have to write this down. I guess to keep a record of how totally screwed up I am. I don't know.

Where was I? Oh, yes, me playing with people. I would write I play with people's feelings, but that sounds so hackneyed and weak. I would say I play with people's minds, but it's a hell of a lot more complex and passionate than that. I say that I play with people. It's fun. It's my hobby.

I get some random crush on someone, I go after them, and, being me, I get them. As soon as I get them, maybe a few days after, I get tired of them. Invariably. I want what I can't have, which got me into the mess I am now. But that will be told in a minute.

**Fingertips have memories  
Mine can't forget the curves of your body  
And when I feel a bit naughty  
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes  
(but no one ever does)  
**

Seamus. Synonymous with "bloody gorgeous" and, more importantly, "achievable." Sure, our pretty statue Draco and lovely dark-haired Harry are good-looking lads, except for Harry having glasses and that awful face and build of his, and Draco with his prettier-than-thou attitude and scrawny body… But they're…._them_. Unreachable to most people. It got even harder to get them once they started dating. Sex Gods if there ever were any. Yeah, it sounds like a load of shit. That's what I tell Draco. "Why the fuck are you dating the Boy-Who-Fucking-Lived, Malfoy?" My answer was --get this-- that they were in _love_. Spare me. We're fucking teenagers. What the hell do we know about love? Our bodies are programmed to get it on as much as humanly possible, while we're still in peak breeding years.

Sadly, that fine tradition has died out. Mostly. I do my small part to keep the Old Ways alive by setting up the annual Beltane party every May 1st.

But Seamus…well, I suppose that's where the trouble started, mate, if you want to know my opinion. Which you do, I assume, because you've already read this far. Anyway, Seamus was Seamus. He was bloody gorgeous and he knew it and he wasn't stuck-up about it the way our two resident Sex Gods were. Gods are pretty unreachable. A few lucky prophets get a few words but gods pretty much keep out of the lower circles of us regular people.

Demigods and angels, now, _they're_ reachable. Seamus was definitely reachable. As am I. But where I don't really end up caring all that much about people I'm with and they fall for me as quick as I'm getting bored with them, Seamus falls for people as hard and quick as they get disenchanted with him.

**I'm not sick but I'm not well  
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell  
**

He's the bounce-back, post-breakup boy for most people. He's like a giant slab of Honeyduke's best chocolate right after a dementor attack. He works wonders. But then people heal and move on.

Seamus, though…hell, he's in love with half the school. More than half. He loves everyone he's been with, and he's been with a lot of people. He has this huge heart and I don't think that there's anyone he can't love. Hell, he'd fall for Voldemort if Voldemort ever had a bad breakup.

Ew. That's fucking sick. Forget I just said that.

Although I heard Tom Riddle was quite the looker at our age…

Seamus is a great guy. But people are pretty screwed up. I'm this godawful, wretched bastard who is better-looking than almost anyone at this school. Seamus is this good-looking bloke, not too special if you were judging purely on a physical basis. I mean, he's cute and all but while he's definitely in the top twenty-five blokes here…he's definitely not in the top ten. But people go to him for looks and me for personality. They act like _I'm_ the sweet, sensitive loving caring guy and _he's_ this warm body who's only in it for the physical stuff. Especially since that…_girl_ broke up with him last month. I, heartless bastard that I am, actually felt sorry for Seamus. I wanted to hex that…_girl_…into oblivion and back so I could do it all over again. She shouldn't have done that to Seamus. Me, maybe, 'cause I wouldn't really have cared, but not Seamus.

Never Seamus.

People are so weird. They get things so screwed up, it might be funny if it weren't…

Forget it.

But they go to him for comfort like a teddy bear or something, and he's just there to make them feel better. It could be anyone but he's so caring that he's the first to get there to cheer people up. But it doesn't mean anything to them. He's a body for them. With me, they actually think there's some sweet, sensitive guy under my bastard mask and they're determined to bring it out.

It's funny how people can see what's not there but can't see what is.

It makes it easier to be a heartless bastard when everyone thinks you aren't. Probably a helluva lot harder to be a good lad when everyone thinks you're not, though. That's part of the reason I went over to see Seamus in the first place. I wanted to see what it was like, living on the other side of the equation. Living as the other side of the equation.

Or, so I told myself.

**Been around the world and found  
That only stupid people are breeding  
The cretins cloning and feeding  
And I don't even own a tv  
**

So I happened to be heading in the same direction as Seamus --pure coincidence, you understand-- one Hogsmeade trip. He was going for the pub. Smart man.

Being thirsty, I followed.

He turned at the last minute and went into Zonko's. Well, see, I suddenly wasn't feeling all that thirsty anymore. So I made to go into the shop. Right then he came out. The sod nearly bowled me over. I was puzzled about this until someone explained it in our common room last night.

Dean, boy, your name just earned itself the number one spot on my shit list.

I'm amazed that Seamus has held up so long, really. Every single person he's with breaks up with him within a week or two. Dean made it the longest. Almost two months. Then he dumped Seamus because, as near as I could gather, he thought Seamus was a slut.

Seamus is so fucking stupid. He trusts so many people when any idiot can see they're more crooked than a set of hag's teeth. Seamus, however, is not 'any idiot'. Therein lies the problem.

But there's no call to be so damn harsh about it.

**Put me in the hospital for nerves  
And then they had to commit me  
You told them all I was crazy  
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, god damn you  
**

Then I got the second biggest fucking scare of my life. Seamus almost died.

Nothing huge. Accident on the Quidditch pitch. Perfectly natural.

Only, there was no practice scheduled. And nothing you do to yourself while flying, short of trying to fly through a cheese grater, could possibly have caused those…scrapes and scratches.

Nothing like this ever happens to Harry and Draco. Oh, no mustn't hurt the Golden Boys.

Nothing happens to that whore Lavender, either. Oh no, mustn't hurt the _nice, friendly_ girls.

Seamus'll give anyone a chance. More than one, usually. He figures as long as it's just him getting hurt, then it's fine. He'd rather kill himself than let someone else die. He honestly doesn't mind getting hurt. I think he's a masochist.

Oh well. Who isn't?

I am too, I guess. I'm the one who's fucking sitting right here, thinking about him.

I wondered--would it hurt more or less to go up to the Hospital Wing and see him? I went up and found out.

**I'm not sick but I'm not well  
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell  
I'm not sick but I'm not well  
And it's a sin to live so well**

I ended up dating Seamus. I found out a lot when we'd sit on the roof and talk. We scorned the Astronomy Tower. IEveryoneI went to the Astronomy Tower.

We weren't everyone. Though between us, I think we'd had just about everyone.

Funnily enough, I didn't get disenchanted with Seamus, Quite the contrary. I developed an actual fucking infatuation for him. I think I got as close to love as a fucking hormonal teenager can get.

We talked a lot.

**I wanna publish zines  
And rage against machines  
I wanna pierce my tongue  
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine  
The trivial sublime  
I'd like to turn off time  
And kill my mind  
You kill my mind  
**

We talked a helluva lot. About everything. Seamus didn't like Harry Potter at all. Or Malfoy. He thought they were glorified egomaniacs who should be taken out and shot. Quietly, so as not to make them martyrs for the press and their legacies.

Seamus thought that the whole Dark Side/Light Side thing was the result of a fuck-up between Dumbledore and Voldemort.

Seamus thought that wizards and witches had one-track minds and were so fucking narrow that it hurt to live with them.

Seamus thought that it might be better if he just slipped and fell off the tower then and there, or had died in that … "Quiddich accident".

Seamus thought I actually believed that he'd fallen off his broom or whatever bullshit Pomfrey made up about his…injuries.

Seamus thought I wouldn't understand if he told me about what actually happened.

Seamus thought I wouldn't care when he gave in and told me about how he'd gotten beaten up with broomsticks and how they'd Transfigured the bludgers to make them sharper, harder.

Seamus thought it was kind of funny that it actually had been a Quiddich injury, just not in the sense that everyone claimed it was.

Seamus thought that no one actually cared about him. I told him that I cared. Seamus looked me in the eyes and told me to stop bullshitting and just kiss him already, since that's what I came there for in the first place.

Seamus thought I was almost as screwed up as he was when I told him I just wanted to sit there with him and…cuddle.

Seamus thought it would be nice to slip off the roof together.

Seamus thought it was cute when I agreed.

**Paranoia paranoia  
Everybody's coming to get me  
Just say you never met me  
Im running under ground with the moles  
(Diggin Holes)  
**

I became overprotective of Seamus. Covertly, of course. No one could know we were going out. No, not "going out", that sounds so juvenile. We were lovers, as close as teenagers could be to lovers.

Nothing much actually happened between us. I mean it. It sounds so ironic. Hogwart's two biggest male sluts, and the most that happened was cuddling and a kiss on the cheek.

I guess it makes sense, though…

That was in seventh year. Then we graduated and I didn't see him for years.

**Hear the voices in my head  
I swear to god it sounds like they're snoring  
But if you're bored then you're boring  
The agony and the irony, they're killing me  
**

We owled each other a ton during that first summer. Then the owls came with less frequency in the fall, and then they stopped altogether.

The second spring, I got an owl from him, telling me he was sorry, but his owl had gotten lost in the Caribbean and he felt really awful that he hadn't written back. So we wrote back and forth for about a month.

Well, I wrote back. He would send a letter, and I would reply immediately.

About a week and a half later, if I was lucky, I'd get a response. Short, light.

Meaningless. Though not for lack of searching in vain for some small meaning in between the lines. There was nothing.

I tortured myself between his replies by listening to the song he gave me right before we started going out, when we were friends, and by rereading his letters over and over again. I can recite every single one of them, or rewrite them down to the last accidental ink blot.

Finally, I tired of my self-imposed torture.

So I fucking threw my subtleness out the window and asked, point blank in my next letter if he still liked me.

He replied that yes, as a friend. Of course.

He said that he was dating a girl. He said that he didn't think he was bi anymore.

He said he hoped I understood, and that we could still be friends.

He said that life was confusing, and that he was sorry.

This brings me to where I am now, two years after graduation. I'm not a fucking teenager anymore.

I fucking love Seamus.

And he's gone straight.

I'm thinking of going back this summer, to Hogwarts, when no one's there but me, and maybe I'll sit on the roof like I did with Seamus.

Maybe I'll be the one to slip off, like a kiss falling from Seamus' beautiful mouth.

**I'm not sick but I'm not well  
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell  
I'm not sick but I'm not well  
And it's a sin to live so well **

I am sitting on the edge of the shingled roof, where I sat with Seamus four years ago.

Yes, I waited.

No, he hasn't come back.

So I'm going to sit here in the warm on this lovely summer afternoon, and think about how the breeze smells like his hair and the golden sunshine reminds me of the way his face lit up when he smiled. I'm going to close my eyes and pretend he's still sitting next to me and that he loves me as much as I love him.

When I finish writing and put down my quill for the last time, I'm going to pretend that he's here, holding my hand in the sun's bloody twilight rays. I'm going to pretend that he'll laugh and say it's nice that we're slipping off the roof together, like we slipped out of acceptance back when we were in school.

I'm going to pretend he'll feel more than the quiet, numbed prick of the death of someone he once went to school with.

I'm going to pretend he'll want to follow.

I'm going to pretend he can.


End file.
